This story was excerpted from Steve Gilbert's D-backs Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

With Father's Day coming up on Sunday, I sat down recently with right-hander Merrill Kelly to discuss fatherhood as he and his wife, Bre, welcomed their first child into the world during the offseason. This will be Kelly's first Father's Day as a dad, so I'm going to turn it over to him to share what it's been like so far. -- Steve Gilbert

Anybody who has kids knows that you try to prepare yourself as much as you can for having them. I remember me and my wife would tell each other all the time like, "Hey, our life's about to change in a big way."

But until that little thing is screaming at you at 3 o'clock in the morning, I feel like there's nothing that anybody can do to prepare for that. So I think the biggest part of the first couple of months was really just trying to get our feet on the ground, just trying to make sure that she was happy. The first couple of months were definitely tough. I would definitely say I didn't enjoy fatherhood right out of the gate. There was definitely a lot of questioning going on in the first couple of months, for sure.

Now it's great. Now she's calmed down. I think maybe it took her a little while to get her digestive stuff in order -- we think that was probably the biggest problem -- she just had basically a tummy ache all the time. But now she's awesome. She's sleeping. She's smiling. She's starting to talk. Now, I would definitely say I enjoy fatherhood.

It's also changed my perspective quite a bit. I mean, even like [Monday], for example (a 5-4 loss to the Reds in which Kelly took the loss). My wife was here last night, and walking out of the locker room, she was the first person I saw, and she was holding Hadley. Immediately, the five runs that I just gave up to Cincinnati just completely go away, because it gives you perspective.

With how much we're here at the ballpark, we make it so much of our life. We build it up to what it is or what we think it is. And then when I walk out of here and I'm able to see her, it reminds me that there's way more out there than there is in here.

If we have more kids in the future, I'm sure it will be smoother. It's like anything: It's easier if you know what to expect. The more you do something, the more comfortable you get with it. I think that was probably part of the issue early on, you don't know what to expect. So you're not only frustrated, but you're also trying to figure things out. Whereas the second time around, I would imagine you cut out the trying to figure out part of it. You can manage the frustration because you're not trying to deal with both sides of the equation, I think.